Kierkegaard and Christianity - Belief or a Means to Change Existence?

Have not been able to do any sustained reading these past few weeks. A couple of nights ago I picked up John Caputo's book on How to Read Kierkegaard. Forty years ago when they talked about him in school, I had absolutely no interest and no regard for him as he was emotional, subjective, and mushy. But I've changed. I'm fighting to get out of the robot rationalism of my younger days of , say, before age 50.

Caputo in one place has this pithy thing to say. He says that K, and these are Caputo's words

"had written that Christianity is not a doctrine supported by evidence but a command to transform existence that can only be witnessed."

Back from New Hampshire

Back from a conference held in New Hampshire. We were nestled in a valley surrounded by a national park. The terrain reminded my of how it is at the TN/NC border on I-40. An enthusiastic crowd of researchers from all over the world who use lasers to study combustion processes were there. It was noted that we get, at present, 85% of our energy from combustion. The food was great and plentiful and the meal times turned into impromptu seminars. I took "What Would Jesus Decontruct" with me for my plane reading.

Memories of Woodstock

NADA. Nothing. Nothing except coming home one evening and from the news first learning about it while in progress. I was 18. There was a slight disappointment knowing something cool was happening far (~1000 miles) away that I could not experience. Not sure if the fall term of my sophomore year had started yet. If not, then I had probably been working at my job that day on the campus grounds of mowing, weeding, hauling furniture, etc. But it was an exciting time to be alive. Wonderful music in the air. A new school term starting up. Maybe I'd meet some interesting girls. Any time you are 18, I believe, you should think it is an exciting time to be alive. That goes for 58 too.

Utterly Humbled by Mystery

This is from a beautiful "This I Believe" segment on NPR. The author/narrator is Richard Rohr, the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, N.M.

"When I was young, I couldn't tolerate such ambiguity. My education had trained me to have a lust for answers and explanations. Now, at age 63, it's all quite different. I no longer believe this is a quid pro quo universe -- I've counseled too many prisoners, worked with too many failed marriages, faced my own dilemmas too many times and been loved gratuitously after too many failures."

The rest is HERE.

The Scientism of our So-Called Common Sense

And here's something else from the book of the last several posts that I like.

"Awakening to the original seed of one's soul and hearing it speak may not be easy. How do we recognize its voice; what signals does it give?"

From my vantage point in life I now understand better the signals I have missed. Signals that were there but which I ignored or looked for in the wrong places. Continuing. . .

"Before we can address these questions, we need to notice our own deafness, the obstructions that make us hard of hearing: the reductionism, the literalism, the scientism of our so-called common sense." (emphasis mine).

He goes on to say that there are "meanings that don't slide in fast, free, and easy, but are encoded particularly in the painful pathologized events that perhaps are the only ways the gods can wake us up."

I wrestle with this because this literalism is my nature. And such nature has been supported and amplified by my choice of occupation as an R&D engineer/scientist. Also, it is how I've been nurtured in what has to be one of the most rationalist of Protestant groups. Will continue to struggle with this because that's how one learns.

What An Oak Tree Can Teach Us

Ah! I like this. From Hillman's The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling

The essence of the oak is all there at once. Theologically, the acorn is like one of Augustine's nationes seminales or seminal reasons. As far back as the Stoics, Gnostics, and Platonists such as Philo, some ancient thought held that the world was filled with spermatikoi logoi - word seeds or germinal ideas. These are present in the world from its beginning as the primordial a priori that gives form to each thing. And these spermatic words make it possible for each thing to tell of its own nature - to ears that can hear. The idea that nature speaks, especially through the voice of a talking oak, remained a vivid fantasy through the ages and was still a subject of paintings a hundred years ago.

Trees fascinate me. When we were looking for a house 19 years ago, mature trees on the land were a requirement for me. Their meaning reaches deep inside me. Hillman's book is an extended discourse on one metaphor or teaching from the mighty oak.

The Acorn Theory

From the first chapter of The Soul's Code by James Hillman:

"We dull our lives by the way we conceive them. We have stopped imagining them with any sort of romance, any fictional flair. So, this book also picks up the romantic theme, daring to envision biography in terms of very large ideas such as beauty, mystery, and myth."

And Hillman promotes the acorn theory of human biography.

"In a nutshell, then, this book is about calling, about fate, about character, about innate image. Together they make up the "acorn theory," which holds that each person bears a uniqueness that asks to be lived and that is already present before it can be lived."